Downward hardware pricing trends and maturing standards have positioned Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) technology for widespread adoption. WLAN access points are finding their way into homes as a way of sharing one broadband DSL or Cable Modem connection without cabling hassles. Both Enterprise(s) and Small Business(es) are moving towards wireless technologies for cost reduction over that of a wired infrastructure and to accommodate a mobile workforce. WLAN technologies are also beginning to explore the “En Route” market potential served through strategic deployment of public WLAN access points for Internet access, better known as Hotspots, which are being built to provide public Internet access using the IEEE 802.11 standards.
The broadband wireless Web is being built around a technology known as Wi-Fi, or IEEE 802.11 family of protocols. Wi-Fi stands for Wireless Fidelity, an increasingly popular networking standard that is used to create wireless local area networks (LANs) at speeds up to 54 megabits per second. The original 802.11 standard established in June 1997 defined a 2.4 GHz system with a maximum data rate of 2 Mbps. Today there are three fundamental “flavors” of IEEE 802.11 WLAN standards: 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g. As of August 2003, 802.11b is the most widely deployed solution due to its wide coverage area and low price, although it suffers from low maximum link rate of 11 Mbps. It also occupies the 2.4 GHz band used by other technologies. 802.11g is an extension to 802.11b, provisioning a maximum link rate of 54 Mbps on 2.4 GHZ spectrum. 802.11a holds the advantage of using 5 GHz frequency band and providing a high maximum link rate up to 54 Mbps.
Current mechanisms to provide Wi-Fi service have tended to restrict themselves to small enterprises, airports, coffee shops and other small scale businesses. Previous solutions can be grouped into two categories: hardware vendors who bundle software management applications with their products and Hotspot vendors who support a narrow number of network architectures. However, such solutions have been unable to provide wide area Wi-Fi solutions due largely to the inability of such solutions to easily integrate multiple or diverse architectures, hardware types, or protocols. In addition, the inability of current solutions to authenticate users from more than one source has hindered efforts at wide-area Wi-Fi services. For example, while many companies may provide cellular, roaming, and/or DSL services in addition to Wi-Fi services, a user of one service cannot easily be added to the Wi-Fi service by cross authentication with the users of these other systems.